Thursday, 8 June 2017

A poem by Roz Goddard

If Merthyr called me back

A woman washing her dark front step
might ask, are you Cyril's daughter?

There's like him you are. The image.
Cill we called him, does he still sing?

I'd wonder what picture she had
as the cloth went cold in her hand.

Did he pull her to a doorway for a kiss?
Did they kick through snow, look at rings?

The map won't show the crazy angle
of the streets, terraces collapsing to

the river Taff, back-ways full of damp
November afternoons. Or a woman who

remembers my father singing, her face
softening at the mention of his name.

Roz Goddard has published four collections, three pamphlets and a full collection, How to Dismantle a Hotel Room. Her most recent collection was The Sopranos Sonnets and Other Poems published by Nine Arches Press in 2010 which featured on BBC R3’s The Verb. A further pamphlet collection is forthcoming from Flarestack in 2017/18.